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She couldn’t call anyone she knew for fear of being found and had no idea what to do. She knew she was going to have to confide in someone soon, but as long as she could stay in the hospital, she was safe.
While Tyler sat in the room, the doctor came in the room. “Are you a friend of our young lady?” the elderly man asked.
“Not really, I found her,” Tyler answered, at the same time Tammy answered, “Yes.”
“Well, we are very thankful you did. She was lucky she wasn’t hurt worse,” the doctor said kindly.
Addressing his patient, he asked, “Do you mind if we talk in front of your friend or would you rather he leave the room?” Giving her the choice.
Tammy answered, “I’d like him to stay, if he doesn’t mind.”
Tyler went to her side and took her hand, feeling her need for support.
The doctor took the chair Tyler had vacated and pulled it up beside the bed. “Ok, miss, here’s the story. Your back is the worst of your injuries. Other than a few scrapes, you appear to be fine. There are a few areas on you back that will need treatment for a few days, but other than that the only thing we need to work on is your memory. Memory is a tricky thing. I can’t find any physical cause for your loss, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not real. I’m not a psychiatrist, but you probably have what is called traumatic memory loss caused by the situation you were in. It could come back in bits and pieces or all at once. It could be a few days or a few weeks. In the meantime, we have to decide what to do with you, I can’t tie up a bed unnecessarily and the cost to you would be enormous. I can keep you here for two to three days longer, but then we will have to find you something else. You could leave today if I knew what to do with you. I will send a social worker tomorrow and they can work with you to help you find a place to stay and other necessities. Hopefully your memory will come back before you have to leave the hospital,” he finished, patting her hand and leaving the room. Tammy started to roll over on her back, but then caught herself. What was she going to do? Leaving the hospital sounded wonderful, but the security of a bed and food sounded better. She would be on the streets when she left.
She had two, maybe three days to decide what to do and then she would be out. She was going to kill her father.
He was the reason she was in this mess. Tammy’s dad was a gambler, a heavy gambler. He had borrowed money from the wrong people and hadn’t been able to pay it back. Her mother had drunk herself to death when Tammy was young, and it was just her and her dad.
His gambling was so heavy that they had lost the house when she was still in grade school. Living with relatives until they wore out their welcome, they had moved from home to home, sometimes staying a week, sometimes several months, depending on whether her father could find work and how bad his gambling was.
He borrowed money from everybody and bet on anything. Somehow he had gotten involved with some loan sharks in Atlantic City and was in big trouble. Being the kind, loving father he was, he gave Tammy to them to pay off his debt.
One day he had come home to the cheap motel they were staying in that week and had two sleazy men with him.
“This is Rob and Frank, and you’re going with them,” he had told her and, grabbing her arm, shoved her at the men. As the men each grabbed an arm and dragged her kicking and screaming out, her father yelled, “Now we’re even and I don’t owe your boss anything more.”
Tammy screamed and yelled, fighting with all her might, but she couldn’t get away. The men shoved her in the back seat of a limo and someone inside grabbed her. They held a cloth over her face until she blacked out.
The next thing she remembered she was hanging naked in a warehouse and someone was hitting her across the back and yelling at her. She must have blacked out again, because when she woke up she was laying on the floor in the same room and alone.
Crawling to the door, she couldn’t believe her luck to find it was open. She managed to get to her feet and ran, barefoot and naked, to the road where she collapsed and Tyler found her. She was lucky she hadn’t been raped—that had probably been next.
She couldn’t go back to her father. He would just gamble her away again and since he had burned the bridges with all the relatives, she had no one.
While she had been remembering everything and trying to decide what she should do, Tyler had been watching the emotions and expressions crossing her face. There was something there, but he couldn’t tell what it was. She knew more than she was telling.
He decided to have Dillon run a check and see if any women matching her description had been reported missing to start. Then he had to figure out what to do with her. From what the doctor had said, she had to be moved in two or three days. He needed to get her fingerprints and see if he could find a match. That would give them a name at least. He hoped she would soon feel that she could trust him and tell him her story.
Smiling down at her, he squeezed her hand and told her, “Honey, I have to go for now, but I’ll be back tomorrow. Do you want me to bring you anything?”
Tammy really wanted some clothes, but didn’t feel right asking him. He was a stranger to her after all. Smiling, she said, “No, thank you, I’ll figure it out.” Telling him goodbye, she closed her eyes.
What was she going to do?
Chapter Three
Tyler left the hospital and once he got to his truck, dialed Dillon. Giving him the info he had, he drove to the office. He was going to do some snooping on his own and check out the area he had found her in. He could see what was there and where she might have come from.
Several hours later, he was no further along, and Dillon had no useful information to give him. He had Dillon check the hospital records and found that the police had taken her fingerprints, finally something productive.
Dillon tapped into the police file and found her name was Tammy Masterson and she was from New Jersey, not far from Atlantic City. More information gave the name of her father, Phil Masterson. Promising to call later that evening with more info on the father, Dillon ended the call to dig more. At least Tyler had more to work with now.
The search on Tammy produced nothing, her record was clean. The father was another story— gambling, drinking, petty theft, he had it all. From the school records they were able to obtain, it looked like she had moved around a lot but had done well in school in spite of the hardship. She had work records trailing back several years and it looked like she had supported her father since she was in her teens.
She was twenty-three years old, eleven years younger than his thirty-four. According to the records they found she was five feet six inches and from what he could see she was very slim. Perfect in his eyes.
Needing to get out of the house, he decided to go shopping. Tammy— he liked knowing her name— would need some things, so why not get them for her? Now that he knew more about her, he had decided that he would bring her back to his place when she was released from the hospital. He had two bedrooms and she would be safe there until they figured out what had happened to her.
